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<a name="Target-Maintenance"></a>
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<p>
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<a name="Target-Maintenance-1"></a>
<h2 class="chapter">10 Target Maintenance</h2>

<a name="index-maintenance"></a>
<p>From time to time you will need to clean up your target tree.  Since
version 2, Stow provides a new utility <code>chkstow</code> to help with
this.  It includes three operational modes which performs checks that
would generally be too expensive to be performed during normal stow
execution.
</p>
<p>The syntax of the <code>chkstow</code> command is:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">chkstow [<var>options</var>]
</pre></div>

<p>The following options are supported:
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>-t <var>dir</var></samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>--target=<var>dir</var></samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dd><p>Set the target directory to <var>dir</var> instead of the parent of the stow
directory.  Defaults to the parent of the stow directory, so it is typical to
execute <code>stow</code> from the directory <samp>/usr/local/stow</samp>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>-b</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>--badlinks</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dd><p>Checks target directory for bogus symbolic links. That is, links that point to
non-existent files.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>-a</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>--aliens</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dd><p>Checks for files in the target directory that are not symbolic links. The
target directory should be managed by stow alone, except for directories that
contain a <samp>.stow</samp> file.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>-l</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dt>&lsquo;<samp>--list</samp>&rsquo;</dt>
<dd><p>Will display the target package for every symbolic link in the stow target
directory.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>




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